We are in 2025 and I just looked at The Exorcist from 1973 for the first time – these are my honest thoughts

I am a massive film buff. I spent almost a decade exploring the most obscure films that inspired George Lucas and other creatives of “Star Wars” for the column “Cinema Behind” Star Wars “from Starwars.com. I have the impression of being able to talk about film with the best of them. Sometimes, however, I find that I have the most bizarre holes of my film, as when I realized that I had never seen” The Exorcist “.

Honestly, I could not give you a single good reason why I had not seen it – apart from there are so many films that it is literally impossible to watch them all, even if, like me, you try to watch at least a new film per day. (Ask my wife or my children, however, and they will tell you that I saw everything.) After watching – and loving – “the French connection” decades ago, William Friedkin has long been on my list of directors to take seriously. Nevertheless, his 1973 classic just missed me.

So far.

At this point, I only knew the film for his moments of reflections on the reflections (the head of Linda Blair turning, Max von Sydow shouting about the power of Christ, etc.). Therefore, I did not expect it to open during an archaeological excavation in the Middle East, the father of Sydow Merrin in search of something. Perhaps his faith? Proof of a god? It is an enticing metaphor. After that, he disappears for almost the whole film, which was another surprise. I thought it was the kind of actor you tried to put in every context of your film if you had it. (Again, I recently reviewed “Conan The Barbarian” and Sydow has only one shiny appearance.)

Instead, the film really belongs to the father of Jason Miller Karras and Chris d’Arlon Burstyn. Father Karras is a priest who has also formed as a psychologist, but he slowly loses his faith while his mother dies. Chris, on the other hand, is an actor whose daughter Reve (Blair) is hurting himself in a terrifying way that the medical community cannot explain.

Spoilers For “The Exorcist” in advance.

“The exorcist” is a real slow burn, and horror in fact lies in the helplessness of these characters rather than the demon with Reban. Burstyn howls doctors who cannot understand what is wrong with her daughter, but make sure she thought Is it certainly not going, is the most heartbreaking and terrifying aspect of the film. How does a rational person lack options insofar as he would be willing to abandon reason and opt for exorcism? And how would their basic belief system be shaken when it works? It’s really disturbing.

Add to that a priest who thinks that exorcisms are absurd, have been trained in psychiatry and admits that he does not believe in a higher power. Then, suddenly, he showed something practically undeniable. Can he still deny it? Is his faith restored? Even he is not sure. These twin stories, as obsessive, constitute the foundation on which the culmination of effects is constructed. I don’t think it would work without all this question of faith.

Please note, the end is a whirlwind, without a doubt. I am sure that the conclusion is what made people continue to come back for more, transforming “The Exorcist” into a real phenomenon. (It’s still the 38th highest classified r film Never.) But for all its intensity and its show, the thing that struck me the most about the end was its moral ambiguity and its delicacy.

After Merrin was killed by the presence with Reban, Karras clogs with the handle and begins to stifle the body of Reban, demanding that the Spirit takes it instead. His eyes become green as he owned, and he jumps out a window when he died. Another priest is there, trying to give him the last rites. In Catholicism, death by suicide is a deadly sin and a path to hell. But there are layers of complications, given the faith of Karras (?) And the self-signing for Regan. Then there is the question of the bad spirit in him. Did Karras finally end his life? Or was the mind trying to kill him because he had killed the other GANAN guards?

Through the circumstances of Karras’ death, the end really asks you, without a single word pronounced, to ask you if that would be enough to admission to paradise, he and Merrin supposed to believe. Really, the whole film raises this question of faith and dogma (especially since real exorcism did not really seem to work …).

I ended up looking at “The Exorcist” twice so that I can write this. I really had to chew and I thought it was great – and, honestly, much better than what I expected. It has retained its sustainable power for more than 50 years for a reason. He has deep strata of history and raises complicated questions about existential faith and humanity. And it’s a really scary film about demonic possession to start, with really large performances. Indeed, although he was a young teenager at the time, Blair is absolutely incredible and really sells the whole film. In fact, I was shocked by some of the things she aged in the name of making the film.

If you are going to visit this one for the first time, do not expect a large and long frightening where two priests spend the whole film trying to launch a demon, which is a silly expectation because I think back to it. You should rather expect something more mature than the kind of gore horror movies and focused on the effects we get these days. This will even make you think of your own mortality (and perhaps those of your children), as well as the speed of your mental health if a loved one started to act in a way that challenges rational scientific explanations. Maybe you would also start thinking about unorthodox treatments.

Like calling an exorcist.